Write What You Want to Write

If you buy into the current thinking put forth by most writer's magazines, books, articles and blogs these days, you'll end up convinced that writing for the marketplace is the only way to go.

Maybe. Maybe not.

If your primary goal is to be published – and why not, we all want to see our work in print some day – then understanding what the market wants is solid advice. For publishing short non-fiction articles, it’s the only advice. Magazine and other periodical editors demand that the writer imitate the tone and subject matter of their particular publication.

On the other hand, if book-length fiction is your goal, then the market is just a bit more ephemeral. Editors are usually looking for a spin of the last great best seller. With budgets tight and book publishing company’s lists getting narrower and narrower, an editor can rarely afford to bring along a writer of great promise but potentially small sales. That seems to make writing for their market a no-brainer – but…

If you do not have the time or expertise to knock off a book in less than six months, or you do not have a direct conduit to a decision-making editor, your manuscript will drift for anywhere from that six months to more likely a couple of years before it falls under the editor’s eager eyes. If you wrote to leap on the bandwagon of a particular best seller, that book is old, old, ancient news. There has been time for several best sellers to take its place. Styles change quickly. Genres last a little longer, but they too have their ebbs and flows.

And then there’s the reason you started to write in the first place. Most of us write because we love a good story, we salivate over language, and we have the dream lurking in the back of our minds that we have something to say that will matter to someone else. So, don’t chase a pot of gold – write what you dream about, what you care about, what you have something to say about.

It may be the next best seller.

f & f
Susan